Blog - Page 138 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Self-Esteem Gospel and the Faith of Christian Parents

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:16-05:00October 21st, 2010|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Current Affairs, Emergent Church|

Three out of four American teenagers, in a recent survey, say that they are Christians. But fewer than half of these who claim to be Christians practice their faith. And among those who say they practice their Christian faith most cannot talk coherently about it.

What's more, many American teens who do say they are Christians have actually embraced what is being termed for good reason “a watered-down ‘mutant’ form of Christianity, one that portrays God as a ‘divine therapist’ whose primary aim is to boost people's self-esteem.”

What is very clear is that neither churches nor parents are adequately helping teens to see, or comprehend, what true Christianity is. Thus the faith of “Christian” parents has now been passed along to their children.

These observations come from the conclusions of minister and author Kenda Creasy Dean, Professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. She formed them after helping conduct research for the National Study of Youth and Religion. Dean says the season she spent interviewing teens about […]

A Different Way to Understand Our Political Differences

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:16-05:00October 20th, 2010|Categories: Ideology, Missional-Ecumenism, Politics, Poverty|

I have mentioned columnist Kathleen Parker more than a few times over the years. Her Washington Post syndicated column appears in my local suburban paper and I always read it. Kathleen is a political/social conservative who offends the far right routinely. I guess this is one reason I am attracted to her writing.

Kathleen recently moved from Washington, D.C. to New York City. She left her solo, freelance writing work to join CNN, an international organization with what she calls “layers upon layers of human management.”

Here is the point she makes about her recent move to New York City and CNN. Living in a city of 8.4 million people brings with it some distinct differences from living in a small town in South Carolina, where she lived for years, and a quiet neighborhood in D.C. here she previously lived and worked on her own. In New York City 8.4 million people live in 303 square miles of space. Parker writes that you can’t appreciate the […]

Faith Like Potatoes

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 19th, 2010|Categories: Evangelism, Film, Prayer|

Faith Like Potatoes is an inspirational film based upon the true story of a South African farmer named Angus Buchan. Angus, a Scotsman born in Africa, moved his family to South Africa after conditions in Zambia became dangerous and intolerable. He started from scratch and faced a series of huge losses in the process. What he never planned on was his encounter with the living Christ in a small Methodist Church. After giving his life to Christ Angus became more than a typical convert. He devoured Scripture, praying and reading the Word even in his farm fields on a daily basis. Soon he became known for his faith and stories about divine power being displayed through his life.

The title comes from a central part of Angus' story. During a drought he planted potatoes. When the harvest came, and the fields were dry and dusty, he harvested a huge potato crop of potatoes that astounded everyone around him. The film […]

Your Church Is Too Small Lecture Series

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 18th, 2010|Categories: ACT 3, Missional-Ecumenism|

Today I am giving the annual Ritz Lectures at Winebrenner Theological Seminary in Findlay, Ohio. Winebrenner is not household name among seminaries but it has been around for a long time. It is denominationally affiliated with the Church of God General Conference, a small denomination that is generally found in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. Winebrenner Seminary serves students from many denominations, including many from mainline Protestant churches. Several people associated with the school are personal friends, including Dr. Brandon Withrow (photo left above), the church history professor at Winebrenner. A local pastor in Findlay, Rev. Tom Lyberg (photo at right below), also had a part in helping to introduce me to the Winebrenner community. Tom serves as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church (ELCA) where I preached three times this weekend. Tom also served on the ACT 3 board for a season. I had a delightful time […]

How Otherworldly Should I Be?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 17th, 2010|Categories: Spirituality|

It seems to me that much of the emphasis of evangelicals on piety and Christian living is rooted in a false dichotomy, or dualism. Spirituality, at least the way I learned about it, meant to withdraw from the world. And devotional life, or quiet time as we call it, means to get my battery charged so I can function in the world without being overwhelmed by it. The image is much like that of a modern battery-powered car. You plug it in overnight and then it runs for so many miles during the day. If you want to go the distance you need to charge the batteries all the more, thus spend more time away from the world. There is almost an equation here: the more time you spend alone the further your car runs in the real world. I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard the quote from Luther that he had a busy day before him so he would spend “three hours in prayer” that morning. Honestly, that has created more than a fair share of guilt for me for a […]

The Human Art of Prospection

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 16th, 2010|Categories: Books, Psychology|

I admit to a growing love for various kinds of psychology and psychological research. The human brain is simply amazing. And much of what distinguishes humans from lower primates, at least in terms of our brain, is in the frontal lobe of the human brain.

After viewing a PBS series on emotional life I was drawn to read the book written by the host of this three-part series. The book, Stumbling on Happiness, by Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert, is a delight. It is funny, well-written, fascinating and incredibly helpful to Christians, even if they reject his evolutionary biology.

If you were asked, says Gilbert, to name the human brain’s greatest achievement you might think of impressive artifacts produced: The Great Pyramid of Giza, the International Space Station, or perhaps the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge. These are great achievements but they are not, argues Gilbert, our “greatest” achievements. A sophisticated machine could produce all of these and much more. Gilbert writes, “Seeing the […]

How Does a Postmodern Understanding of Faith Relate to a Premodern Understanding?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 15th, 2010|Categories: Postmodernity|

All my early life I heard that premodern Christianity was intolerant and ignorant in comparison with the great teachers of the Protestant Reformation. This is simply not true. One illustration will suffice. Theologians such as John Duns Scotus (1270-1308) and William of Ockham (1288-1348) developed new ideas, often quite very different ideas, but they never started new churches or got excommunicated. Different ways of understanding the faith were not only tolerated in premodern time but they were, in so many ways, celebrated. The reason for this breadth in theology is clear. Truth was not thought of as narrow and precise like mathematics.

A primary reason for this premodern flexible approach to interpretation is that Christians argued that Scripture was the root of all truth but the Scripture did not have a single, univocal meaning. Listen to how St. Augustine, one of the greatest orthodox minds in the Western Church, put this regarding the church’s reading of Genesis:

Although I hear people say “Moses meant this” or “Moses mean […]

How Shall We Respond to Our Postmodern Context?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 14th, 2010|Categories: Postmodernity|

Postmodernism teaches us that human concepts are not God-given. Many postmodernists believe that some forms of understanding “may” be innate to our humanness but most are clearly the products of human conventions that were formed within particular cultures and historical events. This whole new way of thinking calls into question the very way that we use language. But if language no longer communicates objective reality then how can we rely on words themselves to faithfully communicate the truth of the gospel? Is this not a short cut to religious and moral relativism?

It would be helpful to define relativism at this point. It is the philosophical doctrine that all criteria of judgment are relative to the individuals and situations involved. It is the theory, especially as it is used in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but only relative. The term, especially when it is employed by Christians, refers to idea that there are no absolute truths; i.e. truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as language or culture. This then leads to moral […]

What Happened to Modernity?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 13th, 2010|Categories: Postmodernity|

Yesterday I suggested that the words postmodern and postmodernity are being widely used by Christians these days. They are quite often used in pejorative and unhelpful ways. When I am asked if I am sympathetic to postmodernism I am not sure how to answer since I have no idea at all what the questioner means?

If the person asking me the question means, “Do you reject truth claims and moral absolutes and embrace relativism?” then my answer is unashamedly negative. But if the person means, “Do you believe Christianity is entering a new time in history when the way that we do theology, mission and ministry will change rather dramatically because the methods we will use to discover truth are changing?” then my answer is an unashamedly positive.

To understand this we need a working, but very simple, grasp of modernism itself. Modernity refers to the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the world in which belief in enlightenment through science arose. This way of […]

Defining the Most Misused Word in Modern Christian Conversation

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 12th, 2010|Categories: Postmodernity|

If you’ve heard the word once then you’ve likely heard it hundreds, if not thousands, of times: postmodern. It is used to describe the current cultural and social context of the West by many writers. It is used in college classes in philosophy and literature (which is where it seems to have originated actually). And it is now used in pulpits and Christian conversations almost every day. One can safely conclude that this postmodern discussion, pro and con, is nearly ubiquitous these days.

I picked up a publicity card in a Christian bookstore (there are less and less such stores these days) that promoted a new book from a very conservative evangelical publishing company. The card employed all the appropriate marketing ideas to try to get me to visit a web site, read excerpts from the new book and get acquainted with the author’s thought so I would buy his book. The exact same process was used by Zondervan to market my book, Your Church Is Too Small. This was not what caught my attention.

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